Project Online Migration to Planner: What Transfers

A Project Online migration to Planner Premium moves the schedule and leaves the operating layer around it behind. The part most write-ups get wrong, this one included until we re-checked every claim against Microsoft's own documentation in August 2026, is which part is which. Planner Premium is a real scheduler: all four dependency types with lead and lag, a critical path, a baseline. What it is not is Project Online's enterprise tier, and the difference shows up in scale limits and in the modules that have no equivalent to arrive into.

Those three buckets decide the migration. A team that used Project Online as a scheduler is largely in the first one and can move in days. A PMO whose reporting, capacity planning, and governance grew on top of the schedule is mostly in the third, where the work is a rebuild rather than an import, and the honest question is whether to rebuild on Power Platform or move to a tool that ships those layers already assembled.

What transfers from Project Online to Planner, object by object

This is the table to take into a migration planning meeting. It reads left to right as your Project Online object, what actually lands in Planner Premium, and the decision that follows. Capability claims were verified against Microsoft Learn and Microsoft Support on August 23, 2026; Planner ships monthly, so re-check anything load-bearing before you commit a plan to it.

Project Online object	What lands in Planner Premium	What that means for you
Tasks, owners, due dates	Transfers	Verify counts after import, nothing else to do
Summary tasks and WBS	Transfers, at limited depth	Deep WBS trees flatten; check the levels you rely on
Dependencies (FS, SS, FF, SF with lag)	All four supported, with lead and lag	Supported is not the same as imported. Microsoft provides no automatic Project Online to Planner migration, so the links come across only as well as your export route carries them
Critical path	Recomputed in the timeline view	Nothing to migrate. It is derived from the dependencies once they land
Baselines (up to 11)	One baseline slot, empty on arrival	Export your variance history before cutover. Recapturing the single baseline overwrites it, so the original commitment is gone the first time you re-baseline
Enterprise custom fields	Ten per plan	A mature enterprise field model is being pruned and rebuilt, not migrated
Enterprise resource pool	No equivalent	Capacity moves to a spreadsheet, a Dataverse build, or a different tool
Timesheets	No equivalent	Time capture needs a separate system before cutover, not after
Cost rates and rate tables	No equivalent	Any cost reporting that reads rates stops at the cutover date
Earned value (CPI, SPI)	No equivalent	Without rates and actuals there is nothing to compute it from, whatever the baseline holds
Portfolio analyses	Portfolios: a consolidated roadmap with a status you set by hand	Viewing survives, the decision layer does not. Driver-based prioritisation, cost and resource optimisation, and scenario modelling are absent
Intake, stage gates, change control	No equivalent	Governance is rebuilt in Power Platform or replaced
OData reporting feed	Dataverse tables	Every Power BI report is rebuilt against a new schema. There is no drop-in template
Schedule size	3,000 tasks per plan	Lower than Planner Basic's 9,000. A single large programme schedule meets this before it meets any missing module

The row that surprises most PMOs is the baseline. Planner Premium genuinely has one, so a capability checklist ticks the box, and the variance history that made the box worth ticking is still lost. Rows like that are why a checklist comparison and a migration plan reach different conclusions from the same product.

SKU map: the Microsoft Project licensing 2026 decision tree walks through the four questions that point at the right tier.

A Brief History

Understanding the lineage helps explain the gaps:

• Microsoft Project (Desktop): the original, dating to 1984, still sold as Project Plan 3 and Plan 5.
• Microsoft Project Online: Project Server moved to the cloud on SharePoint Online, and the enterprise PM tool for Microsoft 365. Retiring September 30, 2026, the last of three Microsoft retirements landing in 2026.
• Project for the Web: the modern, cloud-native rebuild on Dataverse. Simpler than Project Online, and architecturally unrelated to it.
• The New Microsoft Planner (2024): Planner boards, Project for the Web schedules, and To Do folded into one product. This is what Microsoft positions as the successor.

The key insight: the new Planner inherits Project for the Web's architecture, not Project Online's. That distinction matters enormously.

Feature Comparison

Project Scheduling

Capability	Project Online	New Planner
Gantt chart	Yes (full-featured)	Yes (basic)
Task dependencies	FS, SS, FF, SF with lag	FS, SS, FF, SF with lead and lag
Critical path	Yes	Yes (timeline view)
Auto-scheduling	Yes (resource-aware)	Basic date shifting
Manual scheduling mode	Yes	No
Task calendars	Yes	No
Recurring tasks	Yes	No
Summary tasks / WBS	Yes (unlimited depth)	Yes (limited)
Baselines	Yes (11 baselines)	One only, recapture overwrites it
Earned Value Analysis	Yes	No
What-if scenarios	Yes (via Save As)	No

Verdict: The scheduling engine transfers better than most migration write-ups suggest, this one included until we re-checked it. Dependency types, lag, and the critical path all survive. Where scheduling does degrade is depth: one baseline instead of eleven, no earned value, no resource-aware auto-scheduling, and a 3,000-task ceiling per plan that a large programme schedule will meet before any of the rest matters.

Resource Management

Capability	Project Online	New Planner
Enterprise resource pool	Yes	No
Resource assignments	Yes (effort-driven)	Yes (simple)
Resource leveling	Yes (automatic)	No
Capacity planning	Yes	No
Timesheets	Yes	No
Cost rates / rate tables	Yes	No
Resource utilization reports	Yes	No

Verdict: The new Planner has no resource management capabilities beyond basic task assignment. If your PMO relies on the resource model Project Online provides, resource pools, capacity planning, or timesheets, Planner cannot replace it.

Portfolio & Governance

Capability	Project Online	New Planner
Portfolio views	Yes	Yes (Portfolios: consolidated plans, roadmap, manual status)
Demand management	Yes	No
Project proposals / intake	Yes	No
Gate reviews / stage gates	Yes	No
Cross-project reporting	Yes (OData + Power BI)	Limited
Business drivers / prioritization	Yes	No
Change control	Yes (via workflows)	No

Verdict: Portfolio viewing exists in the new Planner. Portfolio management does not. Portfolios will show you a consolidated set of premium plans on a roadmap with a status you set by hand, which is useful. What is absent is the decision layer Project Online called Portfolio Analyzer: prioritising projects against business drivers, optimising a pipeline against cost and resource constraints, and modelling scenarios. Governance is absent outright, with no intake, no gates, and no change control. Enterprise PMOs will need either a third-party tool or custom Power Platform work.

Collaboration & Integration

Capability	Project Online	New Planner
Microsoft Teams integration	Yes	Yes (native)
SharePoint integration	Yes (deep)	Limited
Power BI integration	Yes (OData feeds)	Yes (Dataverse)
Power Automate / workflows	Yes	Yes
Email notifications	Yes	Yes
Co-authoring	No (check-out model)	Yes (real-time)
Mobile apps	Limited	Yes (good)
Copilot AI	No	Yes

Verdict: This is where the new Planner genuinely wins. Real-time collaboration, native Teams integration, Copilot AI, and modern mobile apps are all superior to Project Online's aging web experience.

Administration & Compliance

Capability	Project Online	New Planner
SSO / Conditional Access	Yes (Azure AD)	Yes (Entra ID)
Data residency	Yes	Yes (Dataverse)
Audit logs	Yes	Yes (via Purview)
Custom permissions	Yes (SharePoint-based)	Limited
Backup / restore	SharePoint backup	Dataverse backup
API access	OData + CSOM	Graph API + Dataverse

Verdict: Both products leverage Microsoft 365's security and compliance infrastructure. The new Planner's API story is more modern (Graph API vs. legacy CSOM/OData).

Project Online vs Power Platform: The Stack Underneath

The feature gaps above all trace back to one architectural fact: this is not an upgrade from one version to the next, it is a move between two different Microsoft stacks.

Project Online is the SharePoint stack. It runs on SharePoint Online: Project Web App (PWA) is a SharePoint site collection, permissions are SharePoint permission modes, governance workflows historically ran on SharePoint workflow engines, and reporting comes off the OData feed that Power BI and Excel consume. Everything your PMO customized over the years (enterprise custom fields, EPTs, PWA views, OData-driven reports) is an artifact of that stack.

The new Planner is the Power Platform stack. Its premium plans (inherited from Project for the Web) store data in Dataverse. Automation runs on Power Automate, extension happens through Power Apps, and reporting connects Power BI to Dataverse tables instead of an OData feed. Administration lives in the Power Platform admin center, and audit flows through Purview.

So when someone asks "Project Online vs Power Platform," the honest answer is: that is the actual comparison behind "Project Online vs Planner." You are not choosing between an old and new version of the same product; you are choosing whether to rebuild your PM operating model on Dataverse, and the rebuild cost is the hidden line item in that choice. The diagram below shows why nothing carries over automatically: the two stacks share no schema at any layer.

Project Online vs Power Platform, side by side

Dimension	Project Online (SharePoint stack)	Power Platform rebuild (Dataverse)
Scheduling	Native Gantt, all four dependency types, critical path, 11 baselines	All four dependency types with lead and lag, and a critical path in the timeline view. One baseline rather than eleven, and a 3,000-task ceiling per plan
Resource capacity	Enterprise resource pool, automatic leveling, capacity by role, timesheets	No native equivalent; capacity math has to be modeled by hand in a custom Dataverse table plus a Power BI report
Portfolio	Portfolio views, demand management, business drivers, stage gates out of the box	Portfolios give a consolidated roadmap view of premium plans. Driver-based prioritisation, pipeline optimisation, intake and stage gates are absent and need custom Power Platform work
Reporting	OData feed with prebuilt Power BI report templates	Dataverse tables, but every existing report is rebuilt against the new schema; there is no drop-in template
Admin	SharePoint permission modes, PWA site collection administration	Power Platform admin center, environments, and DLP policy work; a genuinely different admin surface to learn
Build cost	Sunk. Already built, running, and paid for	New. Custom tables, Power Apps screens, Power Automate flows, and DLP policy work typically run low-to-mid five figures in internal or partner build hours before a single report matches what the OData feed gave you for free

Verdict: rebuild on Dataverse only if you were already investing in Power Platform for reasons beyond Project Online. If your organization has a Power Platform center of excellence, existing Dataverse environments, and citizen developers who can own a portfolio app, the rebuild is a reasonable extension of infrastructure you already pay for. Everyone else, meaning most mid-market PMOs evaluating this as a one-off migration, spends less money and less calendar time on a third-party tool that imports .mpp and OData directly and ships resource capacity, portfolio views, and reporting on day one instead of after a build project.

What the stack change means for your migration path

Because the stacks share no schema, nothing you built on the SharePoint side carries over automatically:

• Reports are the underestimated line item: every Power BI report reading the OData feed is rebuilt against a different schema, and the feed disappears with the product. Run the data extraction window first, so the source data outlives the reports that read it.
• Workflows are already gone: SharePoint-era governance flows retired April 2, 2026, and Power Automate flows built against Project Online do not repoint to Dataverse.
• Exports are the bridge either way: .mpp, Project XML, and OData carry your schedule to whichever destination you pick.

The stack change is also why the complete Project Online migration guide treats reports and workflows as their own migration workstreams instead of an afterthought: the data moves in days, the rebuilt operating layer around it is the part that takes weeks.

Who Can Stay with Planner?

The new Planner works well if your team:

• Runs schedules under 3,000 tasks per plan: this is the first hard limit most migrating PMOs meet, and it is lower than the 9,000 Planner Basic allows. Check your largest schedule before anything else on this list.
• Schedules properly, but not at enterprise depth: dependencies, lag, and a critical path are all present, so real scheduling is fine. One baseline and ten custom fields are the ceiling.
• Plans capacity somewhere else: if resourcing already lives in a spreadsheet or an HR system rather than in the PM tool, losing the enterprise resource pool changes nothing.
• Does not report from OData: if stakeholders read project status rather than portfolio analytics, there is no report rebuild waiting on the other side.
• Lives in Microsoft Teams: native Teams integration, real-time co-authoring, and Copilot are genuinely better than Project Online's aging web experience.

Who Needs Something Else?

You should evaluate third-party alternatives if:

• You hit a ceiling rather than a missing feature: schedules over 3,000 tasks per plan, more than ten custom fields, or variance tracked against more than one baseline. These are limits no configuration removes.
• Anything in the third bucket is core to how you run: the enterprise resource pool, timesheets, cost rates, or earned value. None has an equivalent, so each is a separate system or a Dataverse build.
• Governance is the product: proposal pipelines, gate reviews, change control, and portfolio prioritisation across 20 or more projects. Portfolios shows a roadmap; it does not decide anything.

Before you shortlist alternatives, work through the 35-item Project Online pre-migration inventory; tool selection is meaningfully different for a PMO with 120 schedules and custom fields than one with 30 simple task lists.

The Third Option: Desktop Client + Something Else

Some organizations are considering keeping the Microsoft Project Desktop Client (Plan 3 or Plan 5) for complex scheduling while using the new Planner or another tool for collaboration and tracking.

This can work, but has limitations:

• .mpp files aren't collaborative: One person edits at a time, others get a read-only copy
• No real-time status: The desktop client doesn't show live task updates from team members
• Sync is manual: Publishing to a server-based system was Project Online's job; without it, you're emailing .mpp files
• Cost: Project Plan 3 ($30/user/month) or Plan 5 ($55/user/month) is expensive for a disconnected desktop tool. For a defensible 3-year comparison, get the full cost breakdown for migrating off Project Online across license, labor, training, and integrations.

Running the Project Online Migration to Planner

Moving to Planner

If the new Planner fits your needs, Microsoft provides migration tools:

• Automatic migration: Microsoft has committed to migrating Project for the Web data automatically. Project Online data requires manual action.
• .mpp import: Limited. The new Planner can import basic task lists but loses advanced scheduling data.
• OData data: Export via OData feeds before retirement and recreate in Planner manually.

Moving to a Third-Party Tool

If you need the enterprise layers, the shortlist test is whether a tool ingests .mpp and OData directly, and whether it ships resource capacity, portfolio views, and reporting without a build project in front of them.

Onplana, for example, was built specifically for this migration path. The overlap with Planner Premium is real and worth saying plainly: both schedule with all four dependency types and both compute a critical path. The difference is the layers in the third bucket above, the enterprise resource pool, timesheets, cost rates, portfolio governance, and unlimited baselines, which Onplana ships rather than requiring a Dataverse build, plus AI capabilities that neither Project Online nor Planner provide. You can see exactly what your existing schedules would look like after migrating to Onplana by running a sample .mpp through the free migration preview, and audit schedule quality before you migrate to surface the issues that cause most import failures.

See how Onplana compares →

Making Your Decision

Here's a simple decision framework:

Choose the new Microsoft Planner if:

• Your largest schedule fits inside 3,000 tasks and ten custom fields
• Scheduling is the job, and one baseline is enough history to keep
• Capacity, timesheets, and cost tracking already live somewhere else
• Teams integration is your top priority
• You want to stay inside the Microsoft ecosystem, and Planner Premium licensing costs less than the alternative once you have priced the rebuild

Choose a third-party PM platform if:

• You manage complex schedules with multiple dependency types
• Resource management and capacity planning are essential
• You need portfolio-level views and governance
• Baseline tracking and earned value analysis matter
• You want AI-powered risk detection and planning

Consider the desktop-plus-something hybrid only if you accept the manual sync it requires, covered above.

Whichever way it goes, the sequence is the same: measure your largest schedule against the 3,000-task ceiling, count your custom fields, and list every report that reads the OData feed. Those three numbers decide the destination faster than any feature comparison, including this one. Run your own .mpp through the free migration preview to see what your schedules look like on the other side before you commit to a route.

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For more on the retirement timeline, read Microsoft Project Online End-of-Life: What You Need to Know in 2026. Ready to migrate? See our step-by-step migration guide.

If you're staying in the Microsoft ecosystem and exploring the new Planner / Project for the Web / To Do surfaces: Onplana imports from all three. The Microsoft Planner import + live sync guide covers the basic-tier path with one-click import and optional Graph webhook mirroring. The Project for the Web Premium import guide covers the Dataverse path that brings across full FS/SS/FF/SF dependencies, scheduled effort, and resource assignments (the schedule data Premium customers paid for). And the Microsoft To Do bi-directional sync guide covers per-user mirroring of assigned tasks to the user's phone, watch, and Outlook.

Microsoft Project Online™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Onplana is not affiliated with Microsoft.